Archive for the “flash” Category

Adobe has been in the news quite a bit recently, most notably their wimpering/whining about how Apple is being unfair by not including an Adobe technology that is at best only a beta and at worst simply vaporware; namely Flash. Of course, they are also whining about how Apple has disallowed Adobe’s Flash CS5 to create apps for the iPhone. I only mention it because aside from being ridiculous and a little humorous it’s not the first time Adobe has been in the news for something that doesn’t paint them in the best light.

Back in September of 2009 Adobe wrote another Open Letter. But last time it was to their customers regarding their lack of quality support. I was one of those Adobe customers who deserved an apology due to their lack of support with my company’s Version Cue Server issues. And as far as I’m concerned the Open Letter apology was useless and as far as I can tell changed nothing about the quality of their support operations.

As best I can tell when I WAS dealing with Adobe support they had all of 2 people in the company who knew anything about Version Cue Server and I soon discovered that I knew as much if not more about it in most instances. To this day I’m the only one who documented how to configure Version Cue to use SSL. Instead of improving their support and adding more developers to improve what could really be a great source control program for a design group they let Version Cue wither on the vine and just recently announced (if you can call not mentioning something an announcement) that they were no longer shipping Version Cue as of CS5.

I of course have known this for several months as I was invited to be part of some sort of beta program that required an NDA. Turned it out it was a sham and they offered it to me under the guise of letting me help them improve Version Cue and Adobe Drive, but not a single one of my posts in their discussion forums were ever responded to and eventually they confirmed that Version Cue was DOA.

In the end all they accomplished was to shut me up for a while (but I’ll let my daughter take most of the credit for me not having time to write recently) as well as cause me to lose all faith in the company as a whole. All in all not a great plan since I’m in charge of buying/recommending all software in my company with a little less than 100 people. Adobe, I can assure you that I’m buying Adobe alternatives for every possible product and will continue to do so whenever possible.

For those interested in the actual letter, you can read it below. Thanks reader to Chad Jackson for pointing out the link to me. A nice personal touch for Adobe would have been to actually send it to their customers.

Adobe Open Letter

Original Blog Post

I am just about finished testing a Version Cue server replacement at my company. Please check back as I will be detailing the setup and migration process that we take to get rid of Version Cue once and for all.

• Bridge & Adobe Drive Should Display Accurate Info About File Status
• Checked out Files Shouldn’t Disappear from the Server
• More Flexible Permissions on Projects
• Implement Scheduled Server Level Backup

Bridge & Adobe Drive Should Display Accurate Info About File Status

Checked out Files Shouldn’t Disappear from the Server

This occurs most often with Adobe Drive. When you check out a file directly from Adobe Drive, instead of the file information about that file updating to indicate that it is checked out, the file simply disappears from the server. Perhaps it is made invisible or moved to a temporary folder (add that to the long list of Version Cue CS4 mysteries). But when this happens it essentially means that until the file is checked back in there is no record of the file existing unless you open Adobe Bridge. Then you must hope that the file status is up to date as to whether it is checked out or not. Considering that Adobe has rewritten the server and client from the ground up to support Adobe Drive, you would think that they would not force you to open Adobe Bridge to see if a file even exists.

More Flexible Permissions on Projects

This is one of those things that is no different between Version Cue CS4 and CS3, but would be extremely helpful from a security standpoint. As it currently stands right now you cannot set permissions on a per project basis. If you have a group of users you can assign that group permissions but those permissions apply to all projects on the server. In a perfect world, you would be able to set global permissions but also disable inheritance of those permissions on certain projects and assign only specific groups or users to individual projects where necessary. This is just a basic security principle that all enterprises follow.

Implement Scheduled Server Level Backup

It is time to address server level backups in Adobe Version Cue. Currently, it is only possible to do a manual server level back up. While project backups can be scheduled, it is crazy to think that you cannot back up the whole server without manually logging in and clicking the backup button. And to make matters worse, if you do click the backup button, the server becomes unavailable. This means if you try to manually backup your Version Cue server during the day you will prevent all of your users from connecting to the Version Cue server while it is performing the backup. This can actually take quite some time depending on the size of your Version Cue data folder. Even if your design workgroup is not a 24-hour shop, if you’re like us, there is a good chance that designers could be connecting to the Version Cue server at any time. So it makes it impossible to backup the server without potentially affecting staff members trying to get some work done. I don’t know of any other system that disables itself during a backup.

Submit Feedback

As always, I strongly encourage anyone who is interested in getting Adobe to fix the problems with Version Cue CS4 to submit either a feedback requests or a bug report form. They are both accessed from the same link. Select Version Cue from the product list, and if you aren’t sure what to write, copy and paste what I’ve written above. Feel free to submit feedback for every issue as they have told me on more than one occasion that this is the best way to get them to change or fix Version Cue.

If you have questions or comments I’d love to hear them.

Improve reliability to prevent data loss.

Using Version Cue CS4 to manage your files is a lot like gambling. You may win a few hands, but the house always wins. Unlike with gambling, when Version Cue wins it doesn’t take your money, it takes your files and all of your hard work and simply makes them disappear like a Vegas magician.

On average, I need to help someone track down a lost file at least once or twice a week. The only reason it is even that low is because most of our designers have stopped using Version Cue except to check in the final version. When Version Cue eats your file it could be in the local cache folder or it could be somewhere on the server. The frustrating thing is that there is no way to tell without a painstaking manual search.

I spend even more time each week just helping people get connected to Version Cue server using Adobe drive. It is in fact so unreliable that I still can’t figure out how the software ever made it out of beta testing. Reconnecting typically involves deleting the database files stored in the /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CS4ServiceManager/database folder (on the Mac). Most of the time this fixes the problem. But not always. And if you do ever run into this problem be sure to quit the “CS4ServiceManager” process before deleting those files.

Integrate Flash with Version Cue.

There’s not really much to be said here except that Adobe completed the acquisition of Macromedia in April of 2005. Over four years later they still have not managed to integrate flash fully into their products. Really Adobe!!?!!

This happens all too often to companies that have a monopoly position and therefore find it unnecessary to continue to improve their products because, after all, what’s the point if the web and design community have no other option. Adobe keeps raking in the software licensing dollars while businesses and consumers are forced to pay for the “right” to use their software.

Better documentation

This is worth mentioning for the simple fact that Adobe has no idea how Version Cue CS4 really works because they have no internal documentation. To confirm this, all you need to do is call customer support and ask for assistance with Version Cue. They really have no idea how it works. I know this is true because having called in to customer support enough times I’ve discovered several instances where customer service has admitted that certain features are not documented.

It is also evident that their documentation is severely lacking because they were unable to provide me with any documentation for how to install an SSL certificate on the Version Cue CS4 server. I was left to figure it out on my own despite having a paid maintenance/support contract for 20+ licenses of Photoshop. To this day, my documentation for installing an SSL certificate is the only documentation they have on the matter and can be found in the Adobe forum or on the Version Cue help pages. Additionally, while troubleshooting secure connections Adobe Support had me update the “External URL” under the advanced preferences as a workaround. This was an undocumented feature that they “thought” might help.

Submit Feedback

As always, I strongly encourage anyone who is interested in getting Adobe to fix the problems with Version Cue CS4 to submit either a feedback requests or a bug report form. They are both accessed from the same link. Select Version Cue from the product list, and if you aren’t sure what to write, copy and paste what I’ve written above. Feel free to submit feedback for every issue as they have told me on more than one occasion that this is the best way to get them to change or fix Version Cue.

Continuing on with the theme of what is wrong with Adobe Version Cue server CS4 and what Adobe can do to fix it, I will continue my quest to force Adobe to take responsibility for issues with their software. Next up…

3. Checked out files should be easy to find on the local system.

In Version Cue server CS3 a file that was checked out was automatically copied to the local file system in its entirety to a location in the end user’s documents folder. You could always navigate to that documents folder and find every project you were working on and each individual file was available to you with the same name that it had on the server. So if there was ever an issue with the server, your work was safe and easy to find.

In Version Cue server CS4 checked out files are buried in the following location (this one on the Mac) /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CS4ServiceManager/diskcache/ and the files either have a “.info” extension or no extension at all. If the server loses your file (as happens all too often) you’re left trying to figure out which one of those files was the actual file you were working on.  This terrible file organization can be very disconcerting, because it requires putting a lot of faith in a buggy software product. In fact, it is so troubling to our design department that few if any of them actually use Adobe drive to check out files. They work on all files locally instead and check them in to the version control system when they’re done, defeating the entire purpose of version control in the first place. The worst part about this file organization is that you have to add the extension to the actual file just to find out if it is your file or not. That’s not real fun when you don’t even know if it’s a Flash, Photoshop, or Illustrator file so you have to try all those extensions.

4. Bring back synchronization of projects.

Version control systems such as Version Cue CS3 or SVN (and every other version control system I’ve ever seen or heard of) allow you to synchronize content from the server to your local computer. From there, you can work on the file locally and when you are finished you check the file back into the server. For some unknown, and clearly misguided, reason the new Version Cue server forces you to connect to all projects instead of just the project you are working on and requires that you check out individual files directly from the server instead of allowing you to synchronize an entire project (or subfolder) to your local system.

This is especially troubling for flash developers because Flash CS4 does not integrate into Version Cue server (Really? it’s been over 4 years). Instead, it creates all sorts of files on the filesystem and leaves them checked out. Since you can no longer synchronize a folder, you have to manually find each file that has been checked out even if you did not check it out explicitly. The end result is a mess of files that are almost never checked in properly.

I would love for Adobe to explain why they did away with the most basic functionality of a version control system that they had already implemented successfully in Version Cue CS3 server.

Submit Feedback

As always, I strongly encourage anyone who is interested in getting Adobe to fix the problems with version cue CS4 to submit either a feedback requests or a bug report form. They are both accessed from the same link. Select version cue from the product list, and if you aren’t sure what to write, copy and paste what I’ve written above. Feel free to submit feedback for every issue as they have told me on more than one occasion that this is the best way to get them to change or fix version cue.

2. Stop “Phoning Home” with checked out files.

Adobe has since changed the text of this page, http://bit.ly/18HFnS, but it used to say something about how checked out files are synchronized to the server when changes are made. Maybe they changed how it reads because of me (oh I hope so!!).

With every version control system that I have ever used, including subversion, team foundation server, and even Version Cue CS3 server, when a file is checked out it is copied from the server to the local computer. Once the file is checked out it is only worked on locally.

What Adobe has done with CS4 is to check the file out to the local computer (in a non-readable format) but then periodically “phone home” to the server by sending changes that have occurred to the checked out file. It appeared from their features page before they changed it that Adobe was doing this intentionally so that files were not lost in the event of a computer crashing after the file had been checked out and worked on.

Unfortunately, what I believe is happening is that this constant communication between the client and the server is what is causing Photoshop to stutter. Once you hit a threshold of changes Photoshop (or Adobe drive) is sending those changes back to the server and therefore Photoshop hangs as it waits for that communication to complete. This is particularly frustrating because Adobe admits in knowledge base articles (http://bit.ly/oN1AP) that using Photoshop across a networked connection is not supported (scroll to the end of the post for an excerpt of that knowledge base article).

Version Cue Server CS3 was perfectly capable of being used even through VPN precisely because Adobe Bridge CS3 do not require constant communication to the server. But with this constant communication occurring in CS4 it is no longer viable.  When performance issues are occurring even on the LAN there is really no possibility of using Version Cue CS4 across a WAN link.

I know for certain that this communication is occurring because I have captured network communication between client and server while working on a checked out file. I have even recovered a file from the server that Adobe Drive/Adobe Bridge “accidentally” deleted from the client machine before it was checked back in.  Data loss and file corruption is something that I will discuss in a future post.

I strongly encourage anyone who is interested in getting Adobe to fix the problems with version cue CS4 to submit either a feedback requests or a bug report form. They are both accessed from the same link. Select version cue from the product list, and if you aren’t sure what to write, copy and paste what I’ve written above. Feel free to submit feedback for every issue as they have told me on more than one occasion that this is the best way to get them to change or fix version cue.

Please continue reading on to the next article: What’s Wrong with Adobe Version Cue – Part 3

Excerpt from the Adobe Web Site:

Photoshop is a resource-intensive application, requiring more RAM and hard disk space than most other applications. While Photoshop will work with networks and removable media, doing so compromises the application’s performance and reliability. For example, because Photoshop reads and writes image data while you work on an image, the faster the access speed of the disk containing your image or the Photoshop scratch disk files, the faster Photoshop can process image data. Internal hard disks have fast access speeds than network servers (a hard disk accessed over a network) or removable media.

Data transmission along a network is affected by file servers, routers, bridges, network cards, software, cables, connectors, power cables, and power supplies. Network connections can suddenly become unavailable, increasing the risk of data loss and application errors. During transmission and reception, network software verifies that data has been sent and received. The depth of verification depends on the network software package, and may not be accessed by the operating system. When you try to save files across a network, you may receive the error, “Could not complete the request because the file is locked,” or “Could not save because of a disk error.” However, the network and operating system may not notify you if a Photoshop image or scratch disk file contains damaged or incomplete information.”

Additional variables when using networks

There are many different types of network configurations (for example, multi-launch, client-server, or peer-peer) or types (for example, ethernet, token ring, or IP) made by many different companies. Each configuration requires specialized software and hardware, with varying set-ups, preferences, and updates. This additional layer of software and hardware increases the chances of an error occurring (for example, from line noise, RF interference, or packet collisions).

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have a laundry list of items that Adobe needs to improve or fix in the current release of Version Cue CS4 server in order for it to become a truly usable solution for design workgroups.  After consulting with our designers and considering the problems that I have run into myself as an IT administrator I have found 11 things that I think Adobe needs to address, that if remedied would make Version Cue CS4 a home run for our design and programming group and I would imagine for many other design workgroups as well. Of course, my complaints are not limited to just these items. There’s only so much time in a day, so I’m focusing on what I think are the worst offenders. The more you use Version Cue CS4 the more you may discover on your own,

Many of the complaints that I will list below and in future posts are only issues that they have created since the CS4 upgrade. Version Cue CS3 server is actually a great product, but for some reason Adobe took two steps backwards (that’s me being generous) with the latest release.

1. Fix SMB/Photoshop stuttering bug.
2. Stop “Phoning Home” with checked out files.
3. Checked out files should be easy to find on the local system.
4. Bring back synchronization of projects.
5. Improve reliability to prevent data loss.
6. Integrate flash with Version Cue.
7. Better documentation.
8. Bridge & Adobe Drive Should Display Accurate Info About File Status
9. Checked out files shouldn’t disappear from the server
10. More flexible permissions on projects.
11. Implement scheduled server level backup.

1. Fix SMB/Photoshop stuttering bug.

If there was one thing in the current release of Version Cue CS4 that needs to addressed immediately it is the admitted Windows file sharing/SMB bug. According to Adobe, if you run Windows file sharing either on the Version Cue server or anywhere on your network you run the risk of having issues with Photoshop when connected to a Version Cue server. In my experience, it’s more than just a risk. I can duplicate the issue on 2 separate installs on different physical hardware.

These issues include slow and/or sluggish performance when doing (but not limited to) any of the following in a Photoshop document while connected to the Version Cue server through Adobe Drive: selecting a layer, dragging a layer, editing text, changing the color of text or shapes, using the magnifier tool.

The performance issues typically manifest themselves as stuttering, whereby after selecting a layer with the mouse it can take up to 7 seconds (or more) for the layer to actually be selected. That may not seem like a long time, but if you are a designer used to working in Photoshop, that can feel like an eternity. In addition, we are running on very state-of-the-art hardware. And we know with 100% certainty that the problem does not exist when Version Cue server is removed from the mix.

I strongly encourage anyone who is interested in getting Adobe to fix the problems with version cue CS4 to submit either a feedback requests or a bug report form. They are both accessed from the same link. Select version cue from the product list, and if you aren’t sure what to write, copy and paste what I’ve written above. Feel free to submit feedback for every issue as they have told me on more than one occasion that this is the best way to get them to change or fix version cue.

Please continue reading on to the next article: What’s Wrong with Adobe Version Cue – Part 2

A brief history

My company has been using Adobe Version Cue CS3 for around two years with much success. It addressed a very urgent need for us because of the way it allows Photoshop and flash files to be stored on a network server that gets backed up regularly, but still allows the end user to “check out” those files to their local hard drive. Although most people who use Photoshop in a business setting probably are used to opening a file across the network from a shared network drive, Adobe does not support that when using Photoshop. It was easy enough to ignore for a while, but when a bug in OS 10.5.3 caused us to start losing work because of corrupted files, Version Cue was the obvious choice.

When Photoshop and Flash CS4 were released and we received the DVD media in November under our Adobe maintenance contract I started investigating whether we could upgrade. It turned out that in order to use Photoshop and/or Flash CS4 with Version Cue you needed to be running the latest version of Version Cue server, which was CS4.

Version Cue CS4 server and the new Adobe drive were initially released with some major bugs that caused people who used them to lose data so they were initially disabled upon installation with the original Photoshop and Flash installation media. Adobe finally released version 4.01 Version Cue server and version 1.01 of Adobe drive, which were alleged to have solved the problems of the initial release.

What we have done

Because there were some obvious problems with the initial release of Version Cue, I set up a test server on which I installed Version Cue CS3 and restored my data from my live server. I then installed Version Cue CS4. I felt it was important to set up a test environment to verify that everything worked before making any changes to our live environment that would affect our designers or programmers.

I then configured Version Cue to use SSL since we’re using active directory/LDAP passwords. That process is documented (by me) here:

http://bit.ly/16ZUcD

We also discovered a bug in the Adobe Version Cue software that occurs only when connecting to the Version Cue Server across subnets (something that is clearly supposed to be possible according to their “features” page: http://bit.ly/18HFnS). I think it was also a bug in the way SSL was being handled accross subnets, but there have been so many that it can be hard to keep track.  Good news was that Adobe was able to find a workaround by specifying the non-SSL URL and port in the “external URL” field under advanced preferences.

We had our lead designer use the Version Cue server for several days in the test environment and we did not discover any issues aside from some obvious shortcomings when compared to the previous version of Version Cue server (which I will get into later).

It’s in production-now what?

Since we had not experienced any problems, I went through the migration process which requires migrating individual projects from Version Cue CS3 to Version Cue CS4. One thing to note, is that migrating projects with SSL enabled did not work. We also upgraded all of our Macs and all of our PCs to the latest versions of Photoshop and Flash (with all pertinent software updates). At the time our designers were salivating over the new features in Photoshop so after 4+ months of testing everyone was exciting to finally start using the new features.

We quickly discovered that despite all of our testing there was another bug with Version Cue server. We do not have a workaround for this one and unfortunately Adobe has been unresponsive in regard to whether or not they are going to fix the problem. The bug that exists causes Photoshop to stutter and not respond for anywhere from 2-10 seconds while doing simple tasks, such as selecting a layer or moving a layer, among others.

After about 10 days of fighting with Adobe support over e-mail and over the phone I finally was able to discuss my problem with a product specialist who promptly informed me that he believed the issue was that I “run SMB on my network”. Apparently, Version Cue server does not like Windows file sharing either on the server hosting the application or anywhere on the network. It’s not documented too well at Adobe, so they can’t say for sure which one it is. That’s not good since pretty much every small, medium, and large business in the world has Windows file sharing somewhere on their network.  Sure enough though, enabling SMB on my test server caused the Version Cue server to exhibit the exact same behavior as my live server. Unfortunately, removing SMB from the test server has so far not caused the problem to go away.

It should be noted that the stuttering and non-responsiveness does not occur if you do any of the following: disable version cue within Photoshop preferences, disconnect from Adobe drive, or simply work off of your desktop or any local storage. This issue also does not occur if you connect to the version cue server directly from the version cue server. I’ll get into WHY I think that is the case in a future post.

What’s next?

I will be posting a future blog entry called What’s Wrong with Adobe Version Cue – Part 1. I’ll attempt to outline all of the current problems (not necessarily just bugs) with the current release of Version Cue CS4 server. I will also provide information on how to quickly submit feedback to Adobe requesting that they fix these inexcusable bugs and bring the current release a Version Cue server up to the same feature parity as the previous release.

Stay tuned, and please leave comments if you have experienced these or any other problems with Version Cue and/or Photoshop and Flash.